TechSpot's top reviews and long-form features of 2015

It's been an exciting and eventful year in tech, and we've kept busy as new products unfolded. In a record year for TechSpot we published 172 longer form articles, between reviews, guides and tech-related features. Here are the 10 most popular ones we published in 2015:

Nvidia released four new GPUs in 2015 while AMD delivered eight cards if you're willing to be loose with the definition of "new" and three if you're not: Radeon R9 Fury X, Fury and Nano. We break down each price bracket where key battles are being played out to pick some bang-for-buck winners. The GPU battle awaits!

Take a look back at how Intel CPUs have progressed over the years. We test and compare the original Core 2 Duo CPUs against the Nehalem-based Core i5-760 and Core i7-870, the Sandy Bridge Core i5-2500K and Core i7-2700K chips, and then the Haswell Celeron, Pentium, Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 parts.

The FX-8320E has been AMD's go-to option for budget quad-core computing without integrated graphics for a while. But the landscape has shifted on Intel's side with the arrival of its new Skylake-based Core i3 and Pentium processors. We test how the i3-6100 stacks up against the older i3-4360, as well as the i5-4430 and the overclocked FX-8320E.

Today's modern games and many productivity applications can consume upwards of 4GB RAM, so there's little argument for not going with 8GB. However, the need for 16GB of memory is a hotly debated subject. How much do you actually need?

The Core i3 is intended as an entry-level option, the Core i5 is geared for mainstream usage, and the mighty Core i7 is meant for high-end systems and enthusiasts. Many will wonder which one is right for them. That's what we try to answer here.

After running the beta for months, I installed Windows 10 on launch day with the impression that it was relatively fast and stable, though it remained to be seen precisely how fast it was compared to Windows 8.1 and the beloved Windows 7.